Their weirdest job
by cedricsowner
Summary: After about a year of working together Winston still doesn't see what they need Guerrero for. Then a new client shows up... NOT one of my ghost stories. Mind the rating. Final chapter up!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

Usually clients made contact by telephone first. Some of these calls were confused, others panicky. This one was weird.

"I've heard you provide a very special form of protection", a woman's voice said.

"Actually, we do, Ms. Smith", Winston confirmed. _"Jeez, couldn't she have come up with something more creative for an alias?"_ "We've developed a rather unique method of not simply keeping our respective client safe but also eliminating the threat."

She made a noncommittal hmhm-sound. "What criteria do you apply when choosing a client?"

"Excuse me?"

"Is there anything that would keep you from accepting a client?"

Winston wondered if some equal rights organization was checking out the company. "We've had cases in which a client tried to con us…"

Ms. Smith made a dismissive mpf-sound. "Yes, that's understandable, but are there other…erm… characteristics that could keep you from taking a certain client?"

Winston frowned. This really sounded like some sort of trap. "We're strong supporters of gay rights, women rights, human rights…" Thinking of Guerrero, he silently added _"…at least most of us."_

"What about animal rights?"

Winston seriously considered simply hanging up the phone. "I'm sorry, but…"

"See, the thing is this…"

… … …

"_That's_ what she said? And we're still going to meet her?" Chance eyed his usually very no-nonsense friend with more than mild confusion. "This is clearly some sort of nutcase. We've definitely got better things to do…"

"And what exactly would that be? Napping on the sofa in midday, under a pile of Chinese food? We haven't had a paying client in months, the roof is leaking, the mortgage is due and she offered good money", Winston exploded. "It's worth a try!"

"Is it really this bad?" Chance felt a pang of guilt. Their latest client had offered payment, but knowing that she had a small son he had told her it was okay…

"If you wouldn't insist on paying that lowlife friend of yours even when it's a pro bono case…"

Oh no, not _that_ discussion again. Now Chance actually welcomed the alert system's signal that let them know their potential new client had arrived. Both hurried to the surveillance monitor to get a glimpse of the woman who claimed to be a…

"She looks perfectly normal to me", Chance stated. "Nutcase."

"She's wearing a long trench coat, gloves, sunglasses and a hat. It could still be", Winston insisted. They so desperately needed the money…

"I can't believe we're even having this conversation."

The woman stepped out of the elevator. "Mr. Winston? I'm Leda Smith. We talked on the phone." The part of her face that wasn't covered by the sunglasses was hidden behind a floral-patterned scarf.

Winston introduced Chance. She nodded and, after a moment of hesitation, removed scarf, sunglasses, hat, gloves and trench coat, revealing glowing ruby red eyes, pitch black talons and an equally black, hairy tail that ended in an arrow-shaped tip. Rather impressive fangs showed when she spoke.

Well, the good news was the woman was not a nutcase. She had told Winston the truth – she was a gargoyle.

Hey, they finally had a paying client again!

Hooray…

For the first time ever since they had started working together a year ago, Winston was actually relieved that they had Guerrero on the team, too, and that he was due to arrive in about ten minutes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

Ms. Smith had asked a friend, a red-haired, green-eyed woman in her early thirties, to attend the meeting at the office. She arrived at the same time as Guerrero. As the elevator doors slid open, he let her step out first.

Don't mistake this for an uncharacteristical outbreak of chivalry.

We're talking Guerrero here.

Walking behind her gave him the opportunity to study her very attractive curves and slender legs quite thoroughly.

"So you're no gargoyle?", Winston addressed her after introductions had been made. He was still trying to figure out how to deal with the whole situation.

Chance, however, was already looking more interested than shocked. Winston knew him well enough to recognize the tiny gleam in his eyes: He was on the verge of getting excited.

"Melinda is a shapeshifting demon", Leda explained.

"Oh, really? What do you shapeshift into?", Winston asked, aiming at polite conversation. This Melinda seemed a bit hostile to him.

"Guess", she hissed and stuck out her tongue. It was split, like a snake's. Guerrero raised an intrigued eyebrow and took in her physical features with even more intensified interest.

… … …

"I've been receiving death threats for about a week." Leda showed them a couple of loose sheets of paper. "I live in an apartment house in Russian Hill. The first two were delivered by mail…"

"Hang on a sec, you're living in an _apartment house_? With _normal neighbors_? How do you…?" Winston let the sentence trail off. He wasn't sure how impolite his questions came across, but Leda put him at ease with her fangy version of a smile.

"I know I don't pass for human. Most of the times I go in or out through the window. I'm pretty good at climbing…" She flexed her talons.

It occurred to Chance that for a gargoyle, she was missing one rather important asset – where were her wings? Nevertheless he nodded, silently urging her to continue her story. There would be plenty of time to ask for details later.

"The next four envelopes were pushed directly underneath the door. Someone doesn't only know where I live, whoever it is also knows exactly what I am and where my weaknesses lie."

Chance gave her a puzzled look.

"Gargoyles are nocturnal creatures. Daylight weakens us significantly. Even if we stay in a completely darkened room, if the sun is shining outside, we're practically immobilized."

Guerrero opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Melinda cut him off: "No, they don't turn into ashes when exposed to sunlight. They're just very slow and feeble."

He tilted his head. Not many people dared to cut him off.

Now Winston could see emerging excitement gleam not only in Chance's eyes.

Oh, great.

"Whoever pushed the envelopes underneath my door knew that there was no risk of getting caught during the day." Fangs and talons or not, Leda looked very upset and worried. "Yesterday now someone left a parcel on my doorstep. It contained this…" She reached into the pocket of her trench coat and produced a dead bird.

Yes, you read correctly. She retrieved a _dead bird_, a blackbird with its wings cut off, to be exactly, from her pocket. No, it wasn't wrapped into anything.

"I know it's shocking." Leda misread the men's reaction, hovering somewhere between disgust (on Winston's side) and intrigued repulsion (on Chance's and Guerrero's part). "Blackbirds symbolize gargoyles in medieval poetry. As you might have noticed, my wings are missing. This bird symbolizes me."

"If you rejoined your pack, they would protect you", Melinda chimed in.

Leda turned to her friend, locked eyes with her, knitted her brow and lifted her upper lip to reveal a little more of her fangs, apparently a gesture of disapproval.

Winston, meanwhile, studied Chance. It was easy to guess what was going on in his head. He would get the opportunity to go one-on-one with supernatural beings. No way he'd let this pass.

"So, are you going to help me?", Leda asked.

"You've got a serious problem, we're in the problem solving business", Chance told her.

"Thank you", she smiled, revealing her fangs once more. Then she eyed the bird. "Are you going to run some sort of laboratory tests on it?"

"No", Winston replied, "I don't think so. Our approach is less CSI, more Shaft."

A split second later she had engulfed the complete bird, feathers and all. "I hate food going to waste", she explained.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

"So Leda is working in a strip club…" Winston looked around the high-end facility that served all sorts of tastes. Quite some crowd…

"As you already might have gathered from the incident with the bird, Leda's values and code of conduct differ significantly from what you humans consider "normal" behavior. _You_ are surprised that such an intelligent, well-spoken, likeable creature is exposing her most intimate parts to the public, _she _is surprised that people are paying enormous amounts of money to see what she regards as completely irrelevant. "

Hearing about her occupation Winston first had wondered how it was possible for her to have such a job – she definitely didn't pass for human.

Turned out that was exactly the point. For whatever reason, advertised as a naked freak, she drew huge amounts of guests.

Apparently the owner of the club and the customers thought she was some sort of crazy who had gone to great surgical length to make her body appear as inhuman as possible. Judging from the other strippers working in the "special interests" section of the club, that explanation wasn't too farfetched – some were completely covered in tattoos, others had artificial horns implanted in their foreheads or their tongues parted in half. Not to mention the piercings and the brandings… It wasn't too unreasonable to think that Leda had paid some doc with questionable ethics to attach an artificial tail to her coccyx.

"What's your role in this?" Guerrero asked via earpiece.

"Leda doesn't understand humans. For whatever reason she enjoys living in their world, even interacting with them, but she constantly misreads them. Something that can – and already has – gotten her into deep trouble. I'm watching her back, making sure she doesn't get herself killed with her antics."

At least the facility made it easy to keep an eye on Leda without raising suspicions. Chance was standing right next to the cage where she displayed herself, pretending to be a leering customer. "How did she lose her wings?", he asked Melinda via earpiece. The huge vertical scars on Leda's shoulder blades were hard to miss. That must have hurt.

"They were cut off", Melinda explained.

"Care to expand on that?"

"It's the most severe punishment a pack can exert on one of its members, followed only by death penalty."

"Hang on a sec", Winston chimed in. "Her _pack_ did that? Then why the hell did you tell her to rejoin them for protection?"

"The definition of "punishment" includes the idea that it creates compensation and makes the offender better", Melinda lectured. "By cutting off her wings the pack felt they would balance out the crime she had committed and make sure she wouldn't do it again. There's no reason they shouldn't take her back – as far as they are concerned the issue is cleared."

"Why was she…?"

Melinda's face hardened. "She made a stupid blunder."

Guerrero's voice: "Hate to interrupt, but could our expert on mythological creatures society rules join me in the back? She knows her way around here best."

He watched Melinda's arrival from a dark corner. She walked along the corridor, looked around, stopped. With one swift move he was right behind her, pushed her hard against the wall and twisted her arms. "For a shapeshifting demon you're rather slow", he hissed in her ear.

"In my human form my senses are diminished", she snapped back. "What is this about?"

"You're not respecting us", Guerrero snarled. "At the moment you're still trying to hide it as best as you can, but this will get worse and in a crucial moment you'll advise your friend to act against our instructions. Can't have that."

"You're weak, limited things; I want her safe, you can't protect her."

"How weak does that feel?" Guerrero pulled at her shirt's neckline and bit down on her shoulder. She jerked and tried to turn around despite his iron grip on her wrists. This situation could have easily ended in disaster, broken bones and stuff, you know, but instead a supernatural being burst through the backdoor, fangs bared, wings flapping. Guerrero wheeled around, drew his gun and fired.

"Chance!", he shouted. "We've got a visitor!"

_"One?"_ Chance's strained reply came over the earpiece.

The whole building fell dark.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

The second attacker had been hiding underneath the podium on which one of Leda's colleague's had been dancing. Just as the music changed from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club to Justin Bieber (someone must have spiked the DJ's drink again), it shot upward, knocked down Chance with one of its wings and jumped on top of Leda's cage, clawing at her.

Wise decision to wire the metal construction – one simple switch from the remote control in Chance's pocket and the steel bars were current-carrying.

Completely according to plan Leda disappeared through the trap door they had installed in her podium. Likewise according to plan the attacker, judging from its glowing red eyes and hairy black tail the winged version of a gargoyle, crashed to the ground, severely singed.

Also in accordance to plan was that Chance jumped at the gargoyle, taser at the ready, trying to get a clear shot at its neck. Following Leda's advice they had upped the device's electric charge. They couldn't have known for sure that they would be attacked by supernatural creatures, but given who their client was, it hadn't been too much of a stretch of imagination either.

What they hadn't taken into account, though, was that the sudden power surge that electrified the cage bars would not only sent the gargoyle collapsing to the floor, it would also overload the club's electrical system.

Everything went pitch black.

Uh-oh.

Huge, inebriated crowd in a confined space suddenly deprived of eyesight.

Can you say "mass panic"?

"Damnit, Guerrero said that wouldn't happen!", Winston yelled via earpiece. With his booming voice he tried to drown out the scared shrieks from the crowd. "Okay, everybody CALM DOWN!"

The club's security personnel swarmed out, their flashlights helping the customers to find the emergency exits. Chance, meanwhile, struggled to get a clear shot with the taser. Given the beast's enormous fangs and talons, he couldn't afford to miss, especially not in the darkness.

Suddenly he felt something hairy wrap around his neck and tightening its grip.

Fast.

Only then he realized that the ugly tail that prevented Leda from ever going anywhere without immediately drawing attention, actually served a purpose: It seemed to consist of sheer muscles alone, an iron piece of rope quickly depriving him of oxygen.

Sharp claws tore the taser out of his hand, digging deep into his flesh.

When fighting a shark or crocodile, go for the eyes – did the same thing apply for gargoyles?

At least the glowing red eyes were hard to miss, despite the darkness.

But the lack of oxygen was already diminishing his strength, paralyzing him.

All around them people were stumbling over each other, trying to get out of this hellhole. Some even tripped over them. A woman in pencil-thin high heels punched Chance's kidney area. The pain was so intense, for a split second it called Chance back from the blackout he was drifting into.

His assassin instincts kicked in. He lashed out at the woman, grabbed her leg, yanked off her shoe and brought its pointed heel right home into the center of one of the gargoyle's ruby red eyes.

Now _that_ hurts, even if you're a mythological creature. The gargoyle let out an earsplitting scream, loosened its tail's grasp around Chance's neck and tilted its head backwards.

…thus presenting Winston the perfect spot to finally fire the taser.

At least the darkness made it possible for them to tie the attacker into a nice tight bundle and get him out of the club without being seen.

"Make sure the wings are tied up sufficiently", Leda told the men.

"Turning against your own kind again?", the creature growled at her.

They couldn't see Leda's expression in the darkness, but judging from the hair-raising hiss she let out in reply, she had her fangs bared full force in the other gargoyle's face.

In the back alley behind the facility they found Melinda and Guerrero, loading the first attacker into the van. Tying up that one wasn't necessary: It was dead.

"There's not much a round of .45 ammo can't kill", Guerrero stated casually, studying the second attacker Chance and Guerrero were dragging with them.

Melinda didn't look happy at the sight. "Why did you capture him?"

"We're gonna ask him a couple of questions", Chance stated as casually as Guerrero. He was still somewhat in Junior mode. Almost getting strangled by a hairy tail does that to you. "The envelopes were delivered in broad daylight, gargoyles are nocturnal, so there must be others involved."

"He won't tell you anything. And torture is useless. Gargoyles are extremely strong-willed and pain-resistant."

A broad grin spread across Guerrero's face.

For a brief moment it was easy imagining him to have fangs, too.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

"You're not really letting them torture him, are you?", Melinda asked Leda, riding the elevator up to the office. Her tone implied what answer she wanted to hear.

Leda shrugged her shoulders, and it was a lot more of a "don't care" than a "don't know" gesture. "I really enjoy being alive, you know, and if that's the only way to…"

The elevator's doors slid open to reveal Guerrero and Chance, chaining the gargoyle to a metal ring in the floor.

Interior design, Guerrero style.

Winston was rummaging around in the kitchen, fixing coffee and tea. The women sat down at the kitchen table.

Melinda wasn't willing to let go. "If you let that happen your pack will never take you back. I really don't need to tell you of all people how grave of a crime turning against your own kind is, do I?"

They had another stare down contest. Volumes of things unspoken passed between them.

Winston frowned. What was more disturbing? That a gargoyle and a shapeshifting demon were having a wordless argument in the kitchen of his security company while two ex-assassins were watching over a second gargoyle chained to the floor of said company's office building OR that he, Laverne Winston, down-to-earth ex-cop after 25 years on the force, was far more worried by the strangeness of the case than by the fact that a gargoyle and a shapeshifting demon… while two ex-assassins….

He couldn't help himself, but something about this case was all wrong. Apparently someone wanted Leda dead. The threats she had received had been very specific in that regard. But then why send in two gargoyles to off her? Wouldn't a gunshot or a lethal injection have been far more effective?

Guerrero, studying the captured gargoyle intensely, was asking himself the same questions, and just like Winston he couldn't come up with an adequate answer. There was something in the back of his head that was bothering him a great deal, but he couldn't quite lay a finger on it.

He hated this feeling of having overlooked something. In this line of business, overlooking something meant inviting death in. It annoyed him, not to the extent that he was losing focus, but significantly enough to make him tense and alert.

Well, could there be a better ground to start a thorough interrogation from?

"You're not listening", Leda told Melinda. "I don't want to return to my pack. Without wings I'd be lowest in the food chain, I'd get what others deem inedible. I'd also be lowest in the chain of command, forever stuck with doing someone else's bidding. No, thank you very much. I love having my own apartment, I love having a job, I love TV, bubble baths in the company of yellow rubber ducks and Oreo cookies. I'm happy here."

"But these people can't protect you!" Melinda slammed down her hands on the table in a clear gesture of frustration. "As tonight's events have definitely proven, you're not save with humans!"

"Hey", Chance yelled. "She's still alive, isn't she?"

"Dumb luck!", Melinda yelled back. "Amongst your pack you would have never been attacked", she continued in a more quiet voice. "No matter how low in the pecking order, pack means protection for every member."

"I seriously have no idea what you're talking about", Leda stated, got up and walked over to her firmly tied up attacker. "The idea of me showing up at the club tonight was to flush the threat out. We might not have caught the person behind all this, but I'm sure our feathered friend here can help to shed some light on the issue."

The chained gargoyle's left eye looked bad and no one seemed to have bothered treating it so far. Guerrero had duct-taped the creature, but that didn't stop it from letting out a low growl as she approached.

The way she looked at his black-feathered wings betrayed what she was thinking.

She was jealous.

"I don't know what pack he's coming from", she told the men. "Never seen him before. The members of my pack usually have a couple of gray feathers mingled with the black ones. And the basal portion of the contour feathers is almost always gray."

She twisted a couple of the other gargoyle's feathers apart and exposed their lower parts. They were jet black.

"Maybe this is about Zanzibar…", Melinda mused.

"If this was about Zanzibar, I would have received blackmailing letters, not death threats." Leda pulled at the feathers she had been holding and plucked them out. The gargoyle cringed. Guerrero watched its reaction with interest.

"The muscles that join the wings with the rest of the body are the most sensitive part", she told him.

"Time to go to work", he grinned.

"Are you planning to do anything with the dead one in the van?", Leda addressed Chance.

"We were going to cremate it – Guerrero knows a guy… why are you asking?"

"You're not planning to…" Winston didn't even want to say it out loud.

"Well, I love my deep freezer, too…", she replied, "I told you I hate food going to waste"-expression on her face.

"Efficient way to get rid of a body", Guerrero nodded, sorting through his tackle box.

At this very moment the computer attached to their surveillance system started giving off a low beep signal.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

Everything turned pitch black.

Yes, I know, this is getting old, but gargoyles are nocturnal creatures which means they can see really well in the dark. Would you change your strategically advantageous MO just to make things more interesting?

See?

So, everything went pitch black.

An instant later three red-eyed beasts came bursting through the windows. Winston cringed, thinking of the repair costs.

Three more came pouring out of the elevator.

How the hell had they managed to override the lock-down signal? Guerrero had shut off the elevator immediately after the beep signal started sounding, hadn't he? Winston glanced at the dimly illuminated computer monitor that continuously documented the state of the security system and the building's functions.

The elevator was fully working.

Damn him.

Guerrero's mind was racing. It had been damn difficult to kill the one gargoyle in the club, six of them, that was bordering on impossible. So the solution could not lie in overpowering them…

"Give me cover, bro, I think I've got an idea!" He scurried over to the kitchen area. The women followed him, seeking protection there.

"Wouldn't _now_ be a good moment to shapeshift?", Leda asked Melinda.

"To be shredded into pieces by those talons like a garden hose? No, thank you."

It wasn't visible in the dark, but Leda gave her friend a puzzled look.

Guerrero, who had listened in to their conversation, looked more thoughtful than puzzled.

Winston und Chance were firing full force at the intruders, aiming at their glowing eyes, but they seemed to be very good at dodging bullets. Not a single pained shriek indicated a hit. At least the hail of bullets kept the creatures from advancing on them, but maybe that wasn't what they wanted anyway. Their firm goal seemed to be freeing their chained companion.

Guerrero hectically groped his way around in one of the kitchen drawers. It wasn't easy to decide which bottle was the right one without any eyesight whatsoever.

An arrow-shaped tip scraped past Winston's ear. "Guerrero, whatever you're doing, do it faster!"

At this very moment, Guerrero's fingers found the tiny bottle he had been looking for. "No yelling, dude!", he snarled in reply and unscrewed the flagon. "Okay everybody, close your eyes NOW!"

In a bad action movie Winston would have barked back: "Who's yelling now?" before getting thrown to the floor by Chance, but this was real – well, as real as it gets in a case that involves gargoyles and shapeshifting demons – and thus Winston threw himself to the floor all on his own, wordlessly.

A bright flash of lightning illuminated the office. Magnesium, when set on fire, produces one of the most violent exergonic reactions of all substances. To a nocturnal gargoyle in night vision mode its flash feels like a thousand suns all rising at once. Their thin eyelids (nocturnal creatures don't need thick eyelids) were no protection.

Winston and Guerrero started firing again, but again no pained shriek – instead, unfortunately, a groan that stemmed from Chance and indicated _he_ was hurt.

Guerrero produced another flash.

"Chance!"

No answer, but the sound of two guns firing. So Chance was still at least halfway functioning. Didn't say much about his state of health, though.

"You can stop shooting!", Leda shouted. "I can't hear them breathing anymore. They're gone."

Guerrero's rule of survival no. 21: If you can't kill them, scare them off.

Winston scrambled to his feet, finally getting a chance to retrieve a flashlight from underneath one of the floor panels.

Their attackers had vanished just as fast as they had appeared…

… and so had their captive.

The first thing both Winston and Guerrero did, was check on Chance. Apparently a ricocheting bullet had grazed his thigh. He was more pissed than hurt.

Relieved, although he'd never show it (showing stuff like that was for chicks), Guerrero went to reset the electricity. He was quickly joined by Winston.

"I didn't forget to shut the elevator down", Guerrero hissed, dangerously quiet. Winston nodded. As much as a scumbag Guerrero was, he was – as the magnesium solution had just proven – a professional. He wouldn't have made such a blunder.

When the two came back to the office's main floor, Chance and Guerrero had an interesting conversation: "Fit enough for a trip down memory lane, bro?"

"What are you suggesting?"

"Prague", Guerrero replied without hesitation.

Winston, on the other hand, addressed Leda: "Incidents like this always make me hungry. We've got some cover sheeting on one of the lower floors. Why don't we get the dead one from the van for you and I order in some pizza?"

Leda was indeed very hungry and got up to help Winston retrieve her food from the van. When Melinda rose to follow her, Guerrero reached out, covered her right hand with his own and pressed it down on the kitchen table in an unobtrusive but very definite gesture. At the same time she felt the muzzle of a gun against her back.

Chance.

"I'll join you later", Melinda told Leda.

A split second after Winston and Leda had stepped into the elevator, Melinda found herself dangling out of one of the smashed windows, the only thing preventing her from a ten-storey drop being Chance's grip on her ankles.

"And now you're going to tell us why you informed those gargoyles of the captive's whereabouts…", Guerrero told her.

_**A/N: Thank you, littlemissmistake, for your review, it means a lot to me!**_


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

_"Leda is not safe with you. Her only chance to survive is rejoining her pack."_

Melinda's voice rang in the back of Guerrero's mind as he walked up a couple of stairs he thought he'd never ever tread.

_"I'm not sorry for calling the gargoyles. Leda is my friend. You probably have no idea what that truly means, but I'd go through hell and back for her." _

Oh, if anyone knew what that meant, it was Guerrero. Chance was his Leda.

_"Allowing the torture of one of her kind would have made it impossible for her to go back to her pack. I couldn't let that happen." _

_"She doesn't want to go back, don't you get that into your head?" _

Guerrero had had a conversation like that with Chance, about a year ago, in a cabin. _"Let's get in there and finish this thing…"_ He never got to saying it out loud, but he was implying: _"…and afterwards you go back to the Old Man, talk this over and everything will be alright again."_ The conversation had ended with him lying on the floor in a heap of broken furniture and Chance pointing a gun at him, making it very clear that he would never go back to the Old Man again.

Just like Leda wouldn't rejoin her pack.

Unwittingly, Melinda had made this personal for Chance – he now saw himself in Leda and that meant he'd take all sorts of crazyass risks to make sure she'd get the peace and freedom that was constantly denied to him. The Old Man was still out there somewhere, lurking, waiting for an opportunity to get his hands on Chance. He'd tear him to pieces…

Crazyass risks, hm?

Well, maybe not if Guerrero's theory proved correct… Maybe he was only one step away from solving this case – without Chance getting into another one-on-one situation with something supernatural. He rang a doorbell he thought he'd never ever rang.

The door was buzzed open and revealed what looked like a doctor's reception area. "Tell Dr. Mahoutsukai Guerrero is here and would like a word", he told the nurse behind the reception desk. He looked menacing enough to stop her from asking why, but apparently not menacing enough to stop her from giving him a number and asking him to take a seat in the waiting room.

Well, in this line of work she probably met a lot of menacing-looking people. From what he knew of Dr. Mahoutsukai's business, not all her clients were nutcases.

Nobody paid much attention as he entered the waiting room. Everyone was pretty preoccupied: They were all wrapped up in their own little nets woven from fear, deception and unresolved traumata. All in all Guerrero counted five people.

Way too many. He didn't have that much time to waste, this was a time-sensitive matter.

He turned to the couple next to him: "So why are you here?", he asked, studying both of them thoroughly.

"Some kind of curse befell my husband", the woman explained. "He can't…" she blushed "…be intimate with me anymore. We've tried everything else, this is our last hope."

Guerrero watched both of them intently. The husband looked uncomfortable, the wife desperate. "Are these earrings new?", he finally asked.

The woman looked puzzled. "Actually, yes…"

"Gift from your husband?"

"Yes."

"Has he given you anything else lately, flowers for example?"

"Actually yes, only last week – in compensation for having to do so much overtime lately."

The husband looked even more uncomfortable.

"Overtime, hm?" Guerrero locked eyes with the husband over the rim of his glasses. The husband cringed. "New clothes, too?"

"Oh yes, vouchers, really expensive! And he even made suggestions what I should buy – he wants me to try a totally new style…"

"Has your husband changed his dressing style lately, too? And maybe started using a different aftershave?"

Mustering up all courage he could, the husband tried to interfere: "Hey, I really don't know…"

"Yes, actually he has!" The wife was all ears.

"I'm afraid your husband was cursed by a woman. Most likely a new colleague at work. I'd look for someone who dresses in a similar style he suggested for you. And I'd ask his boss about all those overtime hours."

It took her a moment, but she figured it out.

The husband stared daggers at Guerrero. Not for long, though. His wife grabbed his wrist and proceeded to drag him out of the room. "We need to talk!"

Guerrero grinned. Three more to go.

The next two were a couple, too. "We fear our apartment is haunted", the husband explained.

"And what led you to that conclusion?"

"Clogged up sinks and toilets, no water or electricity without explanation, strange noises in the night…" They both looked really stressed out.

"Who is your landlord?", Guerrero asked.

They told him the name. Guerrero rolled his eyes. So _he_ was back in town, pulling his stunts again. "Your apartment is rent-controlled, right? Your landlord has a history of applying certain techniques to make tenants move out… If you're interested, I know a guy who'll settle the issue… against a small fee…"

They were interested. He handed them a business card with nothing but a number on it. One more to go.

The last one was a man in his early thirties who claimed to be possessed by a demon that made him want "unnatural things". Guerrero had noticed the longing glance he had cast at the haunted apartment husband.

Tricky issue. Coming out of the closet needs to be carefully prepared.

Guerrero told him about a support group that would help him find peace with himself. When the man nodded slowly, scared but not taken aback, Guerrero called the group's coach and set up a meeting.

About a minute after the man had left the door opened and a middle-aged Asian woman in a white coat walked in.

"My nurse told me someone is shooing all my clients away." Dr. Mahoutsukai had taken the trouble and come into the waiting room herself. "Why am I not surprised it's you?"

"I need your help."

"So you've decided there are more things between heaven and earth than dreamed of in your philosophy?" She led him to her office. He described his observations to her.

"Make any sense to you?", he finally asked.

She slowly nodded. "Normally I would only hand this over after a prolonged ritual at midnight in the light of the newly risen moon after offering the spirits the ashes of a burnt maple tree planted exactly 14 months ago by a naked virgin, but since it's you I suggest we cut the crap." She opened a drawer of her desk and retrieved a very ancient looking leather bound tome.

"That'll be five hundred dollars."


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

Guerrero only needed to glance at a couple of pages before knowing that he would need help with this book. "I really hate Medieval Latin, bro. Give me good old Cicero anytime, but all those coinages from Greek and Germanic sources…"

"You and the collapsed diphthongs will never become friends, hm?" Grinning, Chance took the tome from his friend, opened it and – sneezed. Substantial amounts of dust were clinging to the ancient sheets.

Winston came into the warehouse's kitchen, looked first at the book, then at Chance blowing his nose and finally at Guerrero. "If this thing carries some sort of century old fungal spores that kill us all, I quit", he growled, disapproval written all over his face. God knew where the lowlife had stolen the tome from.

A lot more of a problem than any medieval version of Tut-Ankh-Amen's curse presented the text itself, however. It was written in scriptua continua. No spaces between the words; no punctuation to speak of.

Paragraphs? Dream on…

"How the hell could they read that?" Winston stared at the text over Chance's shoulder. "Looks like nothing but a jumble of letters to me."

"The medieval monks read aloud, dude", Guerrero explained, his voice clearly indicating that Winston should know that kind of stuff. "Reading silently is a fairly new development in the history of mankind. Even a monk alone in his cell murmured while reading. They processed the text through hearing, not seeing."

"No table of contents", Chance grumbled. "This was clearly written before 1200 AD."

Winston looked puzzled.

"Dude!" Guerrero rolled his eyes. "Before 1200 books were meant to be read continuously from beginning to end, as a method of meditation and contemplation. The idea of having to find any particular part of the book quickly was totally alien."

"Thank you, wiseass, for the history lesson. Does that mean Chance will have to read through the whole damn brick?"

"Maybe we're lucky." Chance started turning the pages on by one, occasionally stopping to sneeze.

"I was serious about fungal spo…"

"Dude, if this book was contaminated you'd already be infected and condemned to a slow and painful death, so stop bitching", Guerrero snapped at Winston, knowing full well that Dr. Mahoutsukai disinfected all her goods. One outbreak of Black Death in the middle of New York, where she used to have her office, was definitely enough for a lifetime. Containing that quietly had been a nightmarish experience Guerrero definitely didn't want to repeat.

But the payment had been quite satisfying.

"You're hoping they put an illustration in?"

Chance nodded, stopped, turned the tome around and showed it to Guerrero. "That what you saw?"

"To a T."

The text explaining the illustration was very enlightening.

When Melinda walked into the office that evening, she could immediately tell something was off. Leda was nowhere in sight. Not a good sign. "So are you going to dangle me out of the window again?", she asked.

"Not if you tell us voluntarily why you sent your friend death threats and created the impression her life was in danger", Chance shrugged.

Melinda bit her lip and lowered her eyes. A long moment passed before she finally spoke. "How did you find out?" Her voice sounded shaky and meek.

"Our first clue were the envelopes delivered by daylight", Winston replied. "No gargoyle could have done that – they're weak in daytime, you said so yourself. Shapeshifting demons, on the other hand aren't bound to the position of the sun."

"The power surge that electrified the cage bars didn't overload the club's electrical system. You had a remote control with you and switched it off so the gargoyles you had hired could come in", Guerrero growled. "I knew what I was doing that night." This was directed much more at Winston than at Melinda.

"We also noticed that you don't shapeshift, even in the direst situations", Chance continued. "You're supposed to be a powerful demon, but we never once saw you in your demonic form, even when we were holding you out of the window. As a snake you could have easily gotten out of that situation…"

"And then there were the green spots on your skin Guerrero noticed when he bit your shoulder back in the club."

Chance opened the ancient book and showed Melinda the drawing of what looked like green liver spots.

"Morbus lacerta", he said. "Lizard's decease. A rare illness among shapeshifters of the reptile kind. First the spots show up, then the ability to shapeshift vanishes and ultimately it ends in death."

"You thought without you Leda would be lost in this world, didn't you?" Winston's voice was a lot more sympathetic now. "That's why you wanted her back with her pack at all costs. You wanted to make sure she'd be safe once you'd be gone."

"Are you going to tell her?", Melinda asked quietly.

"No." Chance closed the book. "_You_ are going to tell her."

… … …

Melinda wanted to take her time making her way to the warehouse's storage room where Leda had temporarily set up camp. Letting her remain in her apartment had seemed too unsafe. Outside, night had fallen. Twinkling stars covered the sky, a rare sight in San Francisco with all its mist.

"You don't need to tell me", a voice behind her back suddenly said. "I listened in."

Melinda wheeled around. Leda was standing directly behind her. She looked angry.

"So this is what I lost my wings for? You're going to leave me."

"I'm sick, Leda. This is not in my hands."

"I might not be able to fly anymore, but my sense of hearing works perfectly well, thank you", the gargoyle hissed. "Morbus lacerta. That wasn't treatable in the middle-ages, yes, but nowadays it is."

Melinda's mouth fell open.

"I'm not spending all of my free time watching TV. Bubblebaths are perfect for reading. Five years ago they discovered a cure." Leda's voice was reduced to a quiet hiss.

"The cure is very expensive", Melinda stammered. Her statement was received with an angry swish from a tail.

"Don't you dare lie to me again! Both you and I know that the vault of Zanzibar contains enough gold to pay for ten treatments. Money isn't the reason you're not even considering the cure – it's the side effect. Taking the cure means you'll turn human. You'll live but you'll lose all your demonic abilities. And you don't want that."

Melinda started crying. "I'd be weak for the rest of my life."

Leda laughed bitterly. "How do you think living without wings feels like?" She turned away, knocking down things with her tail as she walked off.

Melinda remained alone in the darkness for a long time, haunted by images from the past – Leda coming back for her and rescuing her when all hope seemed lost. Leda getting her wings cut off by her own pack as punishment for standing by her demon friend.

It was almost midnight when she walked back to the office's kitchen. The men were still up and about. Winston and Guerrero were squabbling over the perfect way to fry ham, Chance was reading, pretending to ignore his friends but actually enjoying the hell out of their banter. When she entered, they fell silent.

"Are you only doing protection jobs or could I hire you for something else?"

Guerrero shrugged his shoulders: "If the price is right…"

Winston snorted disapprovingly. "What kind of job?"

"I'd like to hire you to break into the vault of an underground fortress named Zanzibar."

_**A/N: Thank you, jackattack, for leaving a comment, it means a lot to me!**_


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

"And you happen to know all that because…?" Chance stared at the detailed ground plan Leda had unfurled on the kitchen table.

"The inhabitants of the fortress hired my pack to build it. Back then I was in a fairly high position in the pecking order. They made me responsible for developing the safety measures."

"Don't get me wrong, but gargoyles don't particularly strike me as great builders, especially underground", Winston said, studying the plan.

"Yeah, usually if you want to build something like that you hire dwarves, but the inhabitants are garden gnomes and dwarves and garden gnomes are mortal enemies."

"Did you just say _garden gnomes_?" Not only Winston, also the other two stared at her. "Bearded, with red cone hats, smoking pipes? About this high?" Winston indicated a height of approximately 15 inches starting from the kitchen table.

"One is cute, one hundred are very dangerous. Have you noticed how much space they dedicated to various torture chambers?", Melinda chimed in from the office's entrance area where she was lying on a sofa. Now that the truth had come out there was no need for her anymore to hide her feeble state of health.

Guerrero looked at the ground plan with newfound interest.

"So you built a sophisticated security system for them but left a loophole in it they don't know about?" He looked at Leda over the rim of his glasses. Chance knew him well enough to recognize the gleam in his eyes as an appreciative twinkle.

"It came in very handy when I needed gold to finance my migration to the human world. Garden gnomes are hoarders. They don't really pay attention to how much they have in stock, it's the adding that's important to them, so as long as you don't steal too much it goes by unnoticed."

Guerrero nodded his head in approval of her foresight. Nevertheless he didn't like the plan. He wasn't sure what was bothering him…all in all it was pretty watertight: Chance would go in through the secret tunnel which led directly into the vault, grab the amount of gold they needed for the cure and get out again. Simple, clear-cut plan, so where was this nagging feeling of slight uneasiness coming from?

Maybe it was his experience that told him even watertight plans can run into icebergs under real-life conditions. Just ask the constructers of the Titanic.

A contingency plan would surely do no harm.

… … …

Climbing down the hidden passage was physically exhausting but manageable. They had had no way to find out in advance if the tunnel was still passable, it had been years since Leda had used it last, but except for the occasional rat and some spots slippery from mold, everything was fine.

Getting into the vault through the trapdoor posed no problem either. "How can you be sure nobody piled gold on it?", Guerrero had asked, back in the office.

"Several of the vault's floor tiles are actually pressure-sensitive triggers. You step on one of them and a gaseous sedative fills the room. It takes effect extremely fast, should you accidentally set off the mechanism you've got about two seconds left to put on your breathing mask." Leda had shown Chance a more detailed plan of the vault which he had memorized. "I declared the trapdoor as one of the triggers so I could be sure they wouldn't blockade it."

The vault was spectacular. The ceiling was a bit low, Chance couldn't quite stand in it, but nevertheless the amounts of gold, silver and jewelry that were accumulated in it must have been worth millions. The room was filled with gold wherever he looked and it was hard not to get carried away by that sight.

Another sight, however, helped him regain his composure quickly. "What is pink, tiny and has white butterfly wings?", he asked the others via earpiece.

"That a gotcha question?", Winston replied, slightly worried.

"Pixies!", Leda all but shouted.

What is the last thing you want to find when you break in somewhere? Another thief.

Or thieves, in this case…

"Whatever you do, don't eat them. They cause caries. For whatever reason garden gnomes love them, they've developed elaborate recipes, but I'd strongly advise you…"

"It's noted!", Chance hissed through his teeth, hiding behind a heap of gold coins and rings, trying to get an idea of how many pixies he was dealing with. From his point of view he could see five pixies flying to and fro, transporting golden items to a tiny hole in the wall. They were actually quite pretty with their shiny white wings, their blond locks and their pink dresses, even the male ones… Judging from the ease with which they worked together, this was not their first visit here.

But it was probably the first visit they let something drop to the floor…

One of the pixies had set her heart on a golden cup – too big for the tiny thing. It grasped it and started flying with it, but then sank to the ground, sank, sank, sank, the others noticed the imminent danger, hurried to help her, but too late: Cup and pixie hit the ground with a loud CLANK!

The noise was not the problem.

The gas was.

Of course the fallen pixie had hit one of the triggers.

Chance immediately put on his mask, but the pixies apparently hadn't taken such precautions.

"Chance!", Guerrero shouted at him via earpiece. "Get the hell out of there! You're NOT going to rescue the pixies!"

But of course Chance was already on his way to the other end of the room to gather up the fallen creatures. Doors on all sides of the vault suddenly burst open and dozens of gnomes, apparently the watchmen, came pouring into the room. Since they were really small, their onslaught physically posed no real problem, but Chance wasn't dumb: Several of the watchmen were equipped with bows and arrows. If one of them managed to shoot a hole into his mask, only a tiny one…

Chance rushed to the pixies' side, picked them up, carefully protecting his mask, and made a run for the trapdoor. Of course the gnomes were trying to block his path, but they were easy to throw, he could grab a couple of them at once and when he kicked at them they flew quite far. It was almost fun.

"Almost" being the operative word here.

Only a step away from the trapdoor he felt it. A tiny prick on his upper lip. A prick he could only feel because an arrow had pierced his mask.

He tumbled to the floor. The last conscious thing he did was roll over so he didn't squash the pixies.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

As he opened his eyes, Chance found himself in a cavern-like prison cell, shackled to the wall with his hands and feet, but with rather long chains – the ceiling here was as low as it had been in the vault, so the gnomes hadn't been able to attach him directly to the wall as they apparently usually did. He managed to loosen his ties with a bobby pin hidden on the inside of his sleeve, and the door of the prison cell didn't seem to pose much of an obstacle either.

On a less positive note, picking the locks of the chains the pixies' wings, hands and feet were bound with was a mission impossible – he would have needed surgical needles to get into those microscopic constructions. At least they weren't chained to the wall. He would have no choice but to carry them again. Unfortunately they didn't seem completely taken by that idea. Every time he reached for them, they shrank farther away from him. "I won't hurt you, I promise", he told them.

"Chance?" Winston's voice. Oh, good. The gnomes hadn't discovered the earpiece.

"Leda, is there anything else I should know about pixies except that eating them would ruin my teeth? I keep telling them I won't harm them, but they seem scared to death of me!"

"Well, they probably don't understand you. Multilingualism isn't held in high esteem among pixies. Have you tried telling them in Pixish?"

Chance took a deep breath. One day he would look back on this and laugh.

One day in the remote future.

The _very_ remote future.

"Leda…"

"HE DOESN'T SPEAK PIXISH!", both Winston and Guerrero yelled at Leda simultaneously.

Chance decided to waste no more time. He broke open the prison cell's door, grabbed the squirming pixies and ran. "I'm heading northbound. Tell me there's an exit somewhere!"

A shrill alert signal started sounding. Seconds later the trip-trap of tiny feet reverberated from every wall, making the fortress sound like a giant hive filled with angry bees.

"Depends on how fast you can swim…", Leda began.

Back in the office it was now Guerrero's turn to take a deep breath. He didn't even want to know why it was essential that Chance could swim fast. This wasn't going well at all.

Time for the contingency plan?

"Two miles down the corridor you'll find a bifurcation. If you head northwest, the passage will end at the shores of a small pond. It's fed by rainwater coming in through a small hole that leads into a narrow pipe that in turn leads to the city's sewage channels. I you make it through that hole you're safe."

"Is the hole big enough for a normal sized human to fit through?" Chance hissed. One of the pixies had just bitten him.

"Yes."

"Then why did you say "if"?"

"The pond is inhabited."

Guerrero had heard enough.

He slipped away, unnoticed by Winston or Leda. Melinda, sleeping on the sofa, didn't notice anything either.

Time for the contingency plan.

"It's inhabited by a kraken, actually a quite friendly one, unless of course the gnomes didn't feed it regularly… which I advised them to do… only hungry krakens are good watchdogs…"

Winston rolled his eyes. This was getting better and better.

Chance, meanwhile, had reached the pond. Damn, the water looked cold. He had made a decision. Getting past a hungry watchkraken, how hard could that be? All he needed to do was swim with slow, long strokes. Kraken don't see very well; it would probably mistake his movements for the wash of the waves.

Good plan. Pity he couldn't explain it to the pixies.

The moment he entered the pond and their tiny pink dresses got wet they started wriggling panicky, emitting high-pitched, horrible screams. Unless the gnomes had kept the kraken so hungry that it had effected its sensory perception, it was bound to notice.

Well, garden gnomes aren't stupid.

The kraken's senses were working perfectly.

A thick, slippery tentacle wrapped around Chance's ankle. Chance wheeled around and turned himself upside down, hoping to twist it and cause the animal to let go, but its grip was hard as iron.

Damn, from the second Leda had engulfed the bird he had had the feeling this job would boil down to an eat-or-get-eaten- situation.

Another tentacle wrapped around his chest.

_**A/N: Thank you to my anonymous reviewer for taking the time to leave a comment, it means a lot to me! The "Chance in cold water" part was suggested by niagaraweasel – thanks for the input!**_


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

First static, then nothing.

No contact with Chance anymore – that had been predictable, the earpieces don't like being doused, but it was still unsettling.

Winston took a deep breath. All they could do now was take the van and head to the meeting point above the sewer cover where Chance was supposed to crawl out.

What if he didn't?

Well, then he and Guerrero would have to think of something else.

Speaking of…

Guerrero?

Winston looked around.

Guerrero? Where the hell...?

… … …

About two feet under water, Chance rolled over again, once more closer to the kraken.

The basic idea of this maneuver was to overstretch the beast's muscles. Generally not a bad plan, given that the gnomes had taken all his weapons away and this was the first kraken he had ever encountered, but the pixies in his arms proved to be quite a hindrance: On the one hand they were in constant danger of getting squashed by either Chance's or the kraken's grip, on the other hand they, too, needed air to survive, so Chance had to emerge from the water in regular intervals.

Every normal person would have let go of the damn things, reasoning that in the end they weren't much more than oversized mosquitoes with goldilocks.

Unfortunately _Chance_ reasoned that if nobody deserved to die, that went for pink permed pixies, too.

… … …

"WHERE ARE YOU?", Winston yelled at Guerrero via mobile phone.

"Contingency plan, dude. _Hungry kraken_ doesn't sound very encouraging to me."

Winston inhaled deeply, readying himself to yell again, loud enough to blow the ears off this lowlife, but then his brain processed what Guerrero had just said. He had been prepared to hear something along the lines of "Had some private business to take care of". This was a surprise. He fell silent, needing a moment to think.

Guerrero, expecting to be yelled at again, wondered if the phone had gone dead. "Dude?"

"AND WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?"

Winston had found another reason to yell.

The answer to that was fairly easy, though. "Because _Chance_ thinks you're helpful and an important asset. _I_ don't." Guerrero didn't say it out loud, though. If his gut feeling was right and Chance was in mortal danger, he couldn't afford to waste time.

"CARE TO LET ME IN ON YOUR BIG CONTINGENCY PLAN?"

"Dude?"

"WHAT?"

"Stop yelling."

… … …

Should this really be it? Chance had pictured his own death a couple of times. He had thought of firearms, explosives, poison…

…but pixies and a kraken?

_Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us_, Pasternak had once said, but Chance guessed it was quite safe to assume he hadn't been thinking about pixies and a kraken either.

Well, whether his death at the hands of a mythological sea monster had been predictable or not, fact was, he was fighting a losing battle. The creature had eight arms and it was strangling him with every single one of it.

… … …

"So that's your plan?" Winston had stopped yelling.

"Any objections?" It was a rhetorical question. Guerrero brought his car to a halt at the spot Leda had described to him. He'd go through with this, no matter what extra-large ex-cop had to say about it.

"You've forgotten something…"

"Oh yeah?" Guerrero removed the sewer cover. "Why don't you share your wisdom with me?" He lowered his feet into the manhole, careful not to let the parcel out of his sight that he had brought with him.

"Chance will want to save the pixies, too."

Guerrero stopped in mid-motion. Damn. Ex-cop was right.

… … …

This was it.

Chance tried to relax. There was nothing more he could do. The kraken was holding him firmly, he was running out of air… To his big surprise, relaxing worked. He felt sorry for the pixies, yes, but aside from that he was experiencing great peace.

No more running.

No more hiding.

No more tossing and turning at night, haunted by faces…

Chance closed his eyes, ready to drift off into eternity.

Eternal darkness? Eternal light?

He'd soon find out.

At this very moment, the water began to vibrate in an odd rhythm.

… … …

For Guerrero, the height of the ceiling in the fortress' main hall posed no problem. He could easily stand upright. Chance would have had to bend over, but since he was lying on the floor, dripping wet, more dead than alive, BUT alive, together with the damn pixies who – surprisingly – were alive, too, it didn't matter anyway.

To calm down a hungry kraken, you have to use ultrasonic waves. Once the gnome king got Guerrero's message he ordered his men to set the transducer in motion. Lulled by the strange sensation, the beast let go of its catch. The gnome guards dragged Chance and the pixies out in the last minute.

Guerrero had never been much of a thief. He obtained objects every now and then, but all in all he definitely preferred cash. Cash that was _brought_ to him, in exchange for certain homemade videos, for example. To make profit with objects, you need the right buyer. Guerrero was a persistent type of person, he usually found the right buyer, but he didn't like going through the trouble and some things were just so hot, selling them was simply impossible.

Thus the original Crown of the Queen Mother had collected dust in one of his safe deposit boxes for a couple of years.

Don't ask the government of the UK about this. They'll deny madly that any piece of the crown jewels was ever stolen and had to be replaced with a copy because it couldn't be found, even though they got hold of the alleged thief. He was discovered floating in the Thames, with his throat cut (for betraying the wrong person months earlier, but the police doesn't know his death and the theft aren't connected).

Well, now the crown was about to get a new home. The gnome king couldn't wait to get his hands on the prized object. Yes! Finally the appropriate ornament for his pate! Oh, how the other gnome kings would envy him! "Take him and leave!", he told Guerrero.

Chance lifted his head in protest. NOT without the…

A messenger brought a dripping plastic bag. "This was delivered a minute ago!"

"What's this?", the king demanded to know.

"The ransom for the _pixies_." The look Guerrero threw at Chance spoke volumes.

_Dude… You and your antics…_

Chance sneezed.

"Excellent gargoyle meat", Guerrero continued. Thankfully Leda hadn't eaten the gargoyle he had killed at the club completely. He hated to admit it, but that had been some quick thinking on Winston's part.

"Now, we know how much you value pixie meat, but gargoyle meat is even harder to obtain, isn't it? Wouldn't it impress your guests even further if you served gargoyle meat at the ceremony to inaugurate the new crown?"

The gnome king slowly nodded his head.


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.**

Unsurprisingly, Chance came down with a severe cold following his encounter with the kraken. He was sneezing, shivering and generally cranky. He HATED being sick.

"Drink your hot lemonade, dude. It's a natural sore throat remedy." Guerrero settled himself in the armchair by Chance's bedroom window.

Huh, the lemonade was bitter! Guerrero's way of sending a message? Chance threw him a dark look. "Say it already."

His friend didn't reply.

Chance waited.

He waited some more.

After about a minute he decided he was too sick for these kind of games and croaked: "Thanks for putting up with the pixies."

Guerrero shrugged his shoulders. "You've been keeping weird company for a while now, bro. Ex-cop, pixies… don't see much of a difference."

They both imagined Winston in a pink tutu with a blond perm.

SNORT.

Chance pointed at a small box on the coffee table next to the armchair. Guerrero lifted the lid, reached inside and produced a heavy golden signet ring.

"Your payment."

Guerrero nodded in appreciation. "Should make up for the loss of the crown."

… … …

Since Chance was down with a cold, it was left to Winston to accompany Leda and Melinda to Melinda's appointment. While Leda was giving Melinda some final pre-treatment pep talk, Winston used the opportunity to have a private word with the doctor.

"I understand that this cure is extremely expensive but you're treating her for free."

The doctor nodded. Winston shifted uncomfortably and took a deep breath.

"Look, I don't know what horrible punishment Guerrero threatened you with, should you refuse to treat Melinda, but rest assured, I won't let him do anything to you and Leda will try to pay at least part…"

Dr. Mahoutsukai started laughing and waved him off. "Don't worry, he didn't force me into anything. He offered me something in return that is far more valuable than any money in the world."

Now Winston was intrigued.

"He owes me a favor", Dr. Mahoutsukai explained. "A favor from Guerrero." She looked very pleased.

… … …

Chance and Guerrero had both dozed off to sleep for a while. A soft fluttering sound woke Chance some time past midnight. He opened his eyes and, to his big surprise, found his bedroom alight with at least a hundred pixies, all carrying tiny sparklers. At first he thought they were just flying all over the place, but after a while he noticed they were forming complicated formations, intricate circles and loops. A flight show, just for him.

The pixies were saying thank you.

… … …

When Winston came back to the office, someone was waiting in the shadows by the elevator.

"I've got a problem with a couple of undead tomb raiders", the dark figure said. He smelt oddly of mothballs and something Winston wasn't too keen on figuring out. Part of the bandages the visitor was wrapped in was coming off and black, leathery skin could be seen underneath. "I've heard this is the place to go to."

"I'm sorry", Winston replied firmly. "We're fully booked for a long time ahead. A _very_ long time."

… … …

A couple of days later, Melinda was out of treatment. Leda helped her settle into her new life as a human, watched over her at night, introduced her to TV, ice-cream with marshmallows and tiger paw shaped slippers. Now, an overly protective gargoyle is something you can only stand for so long. After a week, Melinda kicked her out.

"Finally", she sighed with relief as she slammed the door behind her.

"Yes, indeed finally", a voice behind her said. Damn, her hearing was really diminished. Guerrero was standing in touching distance.

Melinda tilted her head. "What are you doing here?", she asked without turning around, knowing smile already forming on her face.

"There's more to being human than marshmallows and slippers", he breathed into her ear.

"Show me", she replied hoarsely.

He lowered his face to her shoulder and bit down.

~ the end ~


End file.
